Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	ecclesiastical_a	person_n	power_n	3,185	5	5.2905	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A49699	The power of kings from God a sermon preached in the Cathedral Church of Sarum the XXIX day of June, 1683 upon occasion of the detection of the late horrid plot against the life of His Scared Majesty / by Paul Lathom.	Lathom, Paul.	1683 (1683)	Wing L574; ESTC R25132	20,903	43

choose their Mayor this choice doth indeed design the Person but not confer the Power which descends by virtue of the Kings Charter So when the Seven Electors choose an Emperour of Germany or those that usually choose a King in Poland they onely design the Person his power is not from them but immediately from God The third Question Whether supposing that the People did confer the Power upon the Prince in the First Institution of Monarchy it doth now lie in the Power of the People to revoke it This Question seems needful to be handled not only because in the late days of Rebellion it was maintained but because it may be feared that those Seeds are not yet quite rooted out especially seeing the holding the Kings Power to be a Trust committed to him by the People doth seem to design to prove it revokable In Answer hereto 1. I have already shewed that the Supposition which is the Foundation of this that the People confer the Power upon the Prince is false and consequently the Superstructure that is reared upon it must fall of course 2. Supposing but not granting the Princes power to be conferred by the People yet the Revokableness of it will not follow For 1. Both Law and Reason say that what is Absolutely conferred in any Compact or Donation is not to be revoked Against the reasonableness whereof I cannot see what can be alledged 2. Instances in other Cases of like Nature do shew the truth of this When the Dean and Chapter have chosen their Bishop for their Ordinary or the Aldermen and Commons of a City have chosen a Mayor to govern them it doth not lie in either of them afterward to recal the Exercise of this power or to reassume the Trust into their own hands When the Freeholders of a County have chosen their Knights to represent them it will not afterward lie in their power to recall this trust They might have forborn to commit the Trust but being committed they cannot re-call it The same is applicable to the Case in hand if the supposition were true which yet is not to be granted The Fourth Question Whether the Power of Kings be so immediately subordinate to God and depending upon him that no earthly Power whatsoever can call them to account for the administration of their Government and discharge of their Trust The accountableness of Princes to the People in their Representatives hath passed for currant doctrine in the days of imprisoning our late Sovereign That Reason and Conscience may be satisfied of the falseness and dangerousness of such affections I shall offer what follows to prove that God Almighty is the onely Ruler of Princes and that to him onely they owe their Accounts 1. In Reason it is a contradiction after we have owned the King to be Supreme in all Causes and over all Persons both Ecclesiastical and Civil afterwards to affirm that there is any other Power that hath Right to call him to an account and consequently is in that respect his Superiour That we have owned the King as Supreme I suppose all men will confess and the Apostle St. Peter calls him so 1 Pet. 2.13 And that his accountableness to any other on Earth would render those persons that may demand his account eo nomine Superiour to him is grounded upon that known Maxim Par in parem non habet potestatem If therefore the King be Supreme and yet hath others on Earth that are Superiour to him then is he Supreme and not Supreme a palpable contradiction both branches whereof cannot be true Now the Kings Supremacy both the Law hath setled and every good Subject hath owned and therefore must disown the Supremacy of the People either Collectively or in their Representatives as a spurious off-spring descended from Salus populi and Universis minor 2. If we consult the Scriptures when David had committed those two great sins of Adultery and Murder either of which singly was Capital by the Jewish Laws yet do we not find him called to account for them but onely by the great King of Kings If any man here will reply in the Country Proverb of the Author of Julian the Apostate that the People would if they could have called David to an account and punished him too but that David had the Sword as well as Scepter and therefore was above their reach I answer there was then a Sanhedrim among the Jews whose Authority was as venerable as that of a Parliament and yet we neither find them challenging an account of Davids Actions nor God who then made familiar converse with men either summoning the King to submit himself to a Legal Trial or stirring up the Sanhedrim or the Princes of the Tribes to call him to account by judicial Process No the Onely Ruler of Princes takes the matter into his own hands sends his Prophet to him summons him before himself as his Judge brings him to Repentance accepts his Confession and remits his Trespass as to the Eternal Punishment And David appears very sensible of his being subordinate and accountable to God onely when in his most penitent Confession he looks up wholly unto him Against thee thee onely have I sinned Psal 51.3 If therefore we own the Scriptures for our Guide in all doubtful and important points here is an instance to guide us in a matter of this great and weighty moment 3. To hold a Power in the People to call the Prince to account for the administration of his Government is most highly inconsistent with the Law of Nature and all the Reason and Conscience imaginable For it makes the People at once the Complainants the Witnesses the Jury and the Judge For when we speak of the King and the People they are but two Parties If therefore the King must be Impleaded who must be the Complainants and Prosecutors the People Who Witnesses the People Who must be the Jury to enquire of Matter of Fact the People Who must be the Judge to determine whether he hath broken a Law and be obnoxious to punishment the People At last when Sentence is passed upon him who must execute it still the People A thing never heard of in any Judicial Proceedings even in the most barbarous Nations and that which must needs preclude the doing of Justice when Passion or Interest in the Mobile would carry all things according to their own Lusts and Humours 4. The Judgments of God have dogged at the heels in all Ages those Subjects that have risen up in Rebellion against their lawful Kings and either secretly or openly taken away their lives Had Zimri peace who slew his Master 2 Reg. 9.31 And how Gods Justice hath become the Avenger of Bloud and pursued at the heels those who had killed and taken possession and after they had boasted of their wickedness for several years together and some of them desired it might be written on their Tombs Here lies one of the late Kings Judges at last brought